Nasa’s faraway space snowman has flat, not round, behind

FILE- This Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019, file image made available by NASA shows the Kuiper belt object Ultima Thule, about 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, encountered by the New Horizons spacecraft. New photos from the New Horizons spacecraft offer a new perspective on the small cosmic body 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away. Scientists say the object is actually flatter on the backside than originally thought. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute via AP, File)

The faraway space snowman visited by Nasa last month has a surprisingly flat — not round — behind.

Photos from the New Horizons spacecraft offer a new perspective on the small cosmic body four billion miles away.

The two-lobed object, nicknamed Ultima Thule, is flatter on the backside than originally thought, according to scientists.

Pictures released late last week — taken shortly after closest approach on New Year’s Day — provide an outline of the side not illuminated by the sun.

SwRI in the news: Ultima Thule beyond Pluto is flat like a pancake (and not a space snowman after all)t.co/gpDQ9uKfST

Viewed from the front, Ultima Thule still resembles a two-ball snowman, but from the side, the snowman looks squashed, like a lemon and a pie stuck together end to end.

“Seeing more data has significantly changed our view,” said Southwest Research Institute’s Alan Stern, the lead scientist.

“It would be closer to reality to say Ultima Thule’s shape is flatter, like a pancake. But more importantly, the new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. We’ve never seen something like this orbiting the sun.”

Project scientist Hal Weaver of Johns Hopkins University, home to New Horizons’ flight control centre, said the finding should spark new theories on how such primitive objects formed early in the solar system.